Our philosophy in golf schools is that we don’t teach a strict method.  However, I do have a system and a strict method of how we teach.  My system is unique in that I have a lot of room for individual differences and allow all my teachers to use all their creativity.  We don’t believe, as some other schools and instructors do, that everybody is going to fit into the same golf swing.  Everybody is built differently, so there are a lot of different ways to make a golf swing and play golf and do it well.  But we keep in mind basic fundamentals: body motion and club action.  In our teaching method, you can do it your own way as long as you stay within the parameters or limits where we find good players who have been able to do it very well.  I call those parameters the “corridors of success.”  This is a huge part of our teaching success.  Once outside those corridors, virtually nobody in the history of the game has succeeded.  I recommend an immediate change for super-poor body positioning or an off-plane downswing.

In that sense, then, we do have a system of teaching, and you could fairly classify me as a system teacher.  I worked a lot with Ken Venturi over the years, and probably the most important thing I learned from him was consistency.  In other words, if you go to one of our teachers, you’re going to get the same fundamentals, the same concepts, year in and year out.  I believe our system offers the most solid foundation there is.  It is based on fundamentals, yet we allow those individuals corridors to success.  The way we break down and analyze the swing is different from the way most instructors do it.  We look for specific things.  We look at fundamental positioning of the body and fundamental positioning of the club.  We also look for the “death moves,” actions or positions that are so far outside the corridors that they will cause you to hit poor shots forever.  These are the faults we change right away in our students.

I believe that all top coaches in all other sports have a system.  In golf, most of the well-known golf coaches say they don’t.  They’re afraid to be called method teachers.  Often these same instructors teach specific locations in the golf swing and you have to swing in an exact model action.  To me, that is very restrictive teaching.  However, having a method or a certain way of teaching does lend clarity to your message.  It provides consistency to what you are telling students.  Even if it doesn’t fit everybody, the students who come back are going to receive the same message.  To me, that’s a whole lot better than having teachers who are in the search mode themselves.  One month it’s one concept and the next month another.  That’s very confusing and leads to a total loss of confidence in your students.  I’ve seen many method teachers become very, very successful and really help people.  Restrictive method teachers can’t help the vast majority of golfers, but some golfers can get valuable information.

Jimmy Ballard is definitely a method teacher, and he was extremely popular through the '70s and early '80s.  He had many top Tour players going to see him, and his schools drew extremely well.  He’s still very popular today, and that’s a long span of time.  By the way, I learned a lot of great things from Jimmy myself.  He had a certain message that many golfers liked.  I see that same thing in Ken Venturi, who has a certain idea of how the golf swing should be made, or Jackie Burke, Bob Toski, or the late Gardner Dickinson and Claude Harmon. I’ve seen a lot of teachers who changed their messages every few years or maybe more.  I’m always worried about going to a teacher who tells you one thing one year, and when you go back the next year he says, “Oh, you know what, we’re not doing that anymore.  Now we’re doing something else.”  That’s terrible instruction.

I’ve come up with a system that leaves room for individuality, and I’m very comfortable with it.  I’ve taught it since 1985.  We don’t change.  Our schools operate in a consistent pattern, but within the parameters I’ve outlined we judge each individual separately and give him or her the help that best fits and is most likely to lead to improvement.  That’s the way I’d encourage you to study this book.  I’ve tried to make it easy for you to search out the information that will best help you with your individual problems.

That said, there are a number of things we recommend and teach that will help everybody at any level, from the beginner to the Tour player. The first is a series of stretching drills that are specific to golf and will prepare your body for practice or play.  Jason Jenkins, who is a Master Instructor on our staff, is also a kinesiologist and has helped devise some nice warm-up exercises. Another is something that we pioneered in the '80s, when I first started doing schools.  We began having our students do body drills without a club, folding their arms across their chests and coiling and uncoiling to increase their awareness of what the body should be doing in the swing.  To my knowledge, that wasn’t being done anywhere else at the time.

Setup, which is the way you stand to the ball, and alignment, which is how you aim the club and your body before the shot, are pretty much standard for every good player.  There may be some variations to accommodate differences in body structure and shot tendencies-whether you want to fade the ball from left to right or draw it from right to left-but every good shot stems from a setup and an alignment that are basically the same, no matter what your particular swing might be.  I call this the “universal fundamental”-setup, because even most teachers could agree on a proper setup.

The correct grip pressure is critical to a smooth and effective swing.  I’ll discuss this in detail later in the book.  So is a relative absence of tension in the body at address and throughout the swing.  Usually these two factors are interrelated, and they apply to all players, no matter their individual swing tendencies.